Over the past 10 months, the largest single traffic generator search phrase has been the industry generic term. In google it has generated about 2100 visits and Yahoo about 2600 visits. About 90% of the traffic from google is ppc oriented whereas in Yahoo its all organic search.

Of visits to the site that have the same or virtually analogous business terms with a geo modifier, the clear traffic visit leader with the most traffic has been the business term with the city name, versus the business term with state names. Traffic for the most popular business term with the city (washington dc) has generated over 300 visits in this time period. Meanwhile the next most popular phrases with geo modifiers have been for the 2 states.

Of significance, prior to the insertion of google maps into organic searches, their was no noticable difference between industry terms for the generic business terms and any of 3 different most prevalent geo modifiers (2 states, Maryland, and Virginia, and one city- DC.).

It appears that the insertion of a map which has always featured this business at the top of the search page, has increased visits to the site by about 30-50% over searches without a map.

In other words, there is a significant increase in traffic to the site wherein there is a #1 organic ranking, and a map, and a ppc ad over sites with a #1 organic ranking, a ppc ad and no map.(my bold)

To date it appears that high generic rankings or high ranked ppc with geo terms in the title for generic industry terms are critical; high ranked terms for geo-modified business terms are critical, and the appearance of a business in maps within a 3 pack/10pack/authoritative map are of big help…but don’t have the impact of either high organic rankings or highly ranked ppc.

His assessment of coupons? No customer responses as they are buried too deeply within Maps to be found.

Google Coupons have been the poor step child of the Maps world since their introduction. They just haven’t gotten any respect. Now though, four months after my first analysis, Google is seeing annualized growth rates of 54% despite the fact that it appears that ValPak now has a significantly lower presence. In fact if you calculate the growth in coupons just from the Local Business Center and remove ValPak from the equation, there has been growth of 171% on an annualized basis.

All of the old questions are still there: Why do they promote the program so little? Will it ever achieve greater exposure? Will it play a role in the world of coupons in the future?

And there now is a new question: Is ValPak cutting back its commitment to Google Coupons?

The total numbers are still low in an absolute sense but the growth rate augurs well given the low overall rates of growth that have been reported elsewhere in the online coupon segment. This growth has occurred despite a lack of promotion, virtually no visibility and a number of bugs in the coupon implementation in the Local Business Center.

In December I reported a Google Maps Coupon Bug where if you entered an expiration date the coupon would never show up. It appears that the bug still exists although in slightly less virulent form. There have been a number of reports in the Google Maps For Business Groups where if you select an expiration date the coupon defaults back to no expiration and no date appears on the coupon:

Hmm…Jen I think you’re not understanding. Nobody is doing anything
wrong. Clicking on the radio button and selecting a future date from
the calendar then clicking on continue, results in being returned to
the local tab instead of coupons, then clicking on the coupon tab
reveals that the coupon is now activated but there is NO expiration
date, it says “Never Expires”. Going back into edit, shows that the
“Never expires” radio button is once again selected. We cannot set a
date and have it “stick”. It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science,
it’s just plain broken. I’ve tried it repeatedly with both Firefox
and ie7 and neither works. It appears that the only thing we users
can do, is to not use google coupons!

For now the only solution to having an expiration date is to manage the process manually. When you create a coupon, enter the expiration date manually on the coupon body and then be sure to remove the coupon at the end of your promotion

Yesterday I noted that Google Coupon results were showing up in the main search results page for coupon related search phrases. Miriam Ellis who writes a local oriented blog SEO Igloo asked whether using coupons for non-retail oriented deals was a useful strategy.

I have several local search clients that have added service oriented coupons in an effort to 1)test the coupon idea on the premise that they couldn’t hurt* and might generate direct traffic and 2)to see if they helped their rank in the local results. While we have not seen many coupon redemptions, it does appear to have a positive impact on the local standing.

However we had a pleasant surprise as in addition these coupon results also started showing up in the main search results pages for “general service + location” searches. Google Coupons are low cost and easy to implement. Given Google’s penchant for increasing “localness” in their search results, these coupons may just show up that much more often in the future.

Google has recently refined their coupon promotion techniques. One such refinement is including Google coupon results in the main search results page.

In November, 2007 Google started using Adwords to promote coupons. For specific searches (pizza coupon) google would present Adwords that would take the user directly to view local coupons in Maps. Now on these specific searches Google is promoting Adwords to restauranteurs instead.

Of more interest and of more impact is the change in how Google is handling results on more general and higher volume coupon searches. On the coupon search phrase like “Coupon Buffalo, NY” Google is now integrating a link to their coupons very high in the ogranic results. In this example the coupon link appears above the Expanded Local OneBox.

The take away: Anyone creating local search marketing campaigns needs to consider the value of coupons and whether they can achieve some additional exposure by using Google Coupons. Particularly now while the coupon inventory in Google is the opportunities to be found are greater. It is also possible that coupon ranking authority may be related to the age of the coupon.

According to the aricle : RedPlum will join a small cadre of similar sites, like CoolSavings.com, Coupons.com and ValPak.com, that have struggled to build traffic and wean consumers off paper coupons. In the 12 months that ended in October, the number of visitors to coupon sites grew by only 6 percent over the previous year, to 20.3 million from 19.1 million, according to ComScore, an Internet marketing research company.

This slow growth of on-line coupons is evident in Google Coupons as well. There appears to be little or no growth in either coupon users or total coupon creation.

Google Coupons now offers the ability to return Coupons in your main search results via the Google Co-op. When you select the above button from Google Coupon search you will be asked to log in and taken to this page at Google Co-op beta for a subscription confirmation:

You can add information created by Coupons to your Google search results pages by subscribing to their Subscribed Links.

Whenever you search on Google in an area of their expertise, the first result you see will be relevant content they provide.

To subscribe to Coupons, select the Subscribe button below. To learn more about Coupons, you can visit their Google Co-op profile page and then subscribe from there.

On the profile page are presented with additional information about the Coupon Subscription from the Co-op (note that currently 57 others have subscribed):

You are then shown what your subscribed link will look like on the main results page:

When searching on “pizza coupons”, the Pizza Coupons adword results take you to your local ads apparently based on your user profile and/or location. I for example, was shown coupons for Allegany NY when I clicked through the ad on the right (see image below).

Sure, here’s what insight I can provide. If you upload coupons using a feed (see this page ), you can include enhanced content like images, barcodes, and logos. As you can see, the appearance of Valpak-provided coupons is slightly unique. This helps Valpak merchants recognize their coupons.

â€¢ The coupon provider logo should be 100 x21 pixels, Valpak’s logo is 120 pixels by 34
â€¢ The image filed is indicated may be up to 120 pixels high and 120 pixels wide and there is no provision for business logo. The Valpak coupons provide a business logo that is 155 x 103
â€¢ There appears to no allowance in the upload feed for multiple coupons like ValPak is able to do
â€¢ There appears to be no provision for the inclusion of your business logo in list view
As long as coupons have played such a minor role in the real world of Google search, this type of difference in allowing more technical clients (read larger & with more money) access to additional features and allowing one client (ValPak) the most features is a non-issue. However, as soon as Google moves coupons to the surface of the main results page, this discrepancy will become problematic.